WannaCry? Not us!

Posted by onMay 25, 2017| Featured

By now, we’ve all heard of WannaCry – a ransomware attack that’s being called one of the worst cybersecurity attacks in history. But what have we learned?

WannaCry targeted a vulnerability found in the Microsoft Windows operating systems – from Vista all the way to Windows 10. And even though Microsoft issued a patch to fix this vulnerability back in March, many people and organizations failed to update.

Large organizations such as schools and hospitals often take longer to update their machines so that they can evaluate just how these large scale updates will impact their network and their help desk resources; but in doing so, they leave themselves open to attacks like this.

SafeConnect allows organizations to create OS patch level policies that automatically quarantine devices from the network if their operating system hasn’t recently been patched; it also allows administrators to block access for devices running older operating systems that no longer receive mainstream support. This would’ve helped for the networks that have endpoints on it running Windows XP or Windows 8 – versions for which Microsoft did not release fixes until after the attack had already started.